There and Back Again

Total number of kilometers: 1268

The past few days have been a dizzying whirlwind of cities. By the time I had pedaled halfway across Belgium last Friday, it was quite clear that I no longer had enough time to bike the full distance to Amsterdam before my return flight departed for Seattle. I opted to switch my method of travel to train for a few days, which afforded me just barely enough breathing room for rushed visits through a handful of major cities, including Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Amsterdam.

Rotterdam, The Hague, and Amsterdam are all part of a formidably sized conurbation known as the Randstad, with a population of more than seven million individuals. Here, city borders grow into one another to create one giant, well-connected urban area. Despite this gradual merging, each city maintains its own separate identity: Rotterdam is a powerful, industrious town that boasted the world's busiest port for the latter half of the 20th century, until it was overtaken by Shangai in 2004. During World War II, almost 40,000 homes and buildings in Rotterdam's historic downtown were completely leveled in the space of fifteen minutes during the German invasion of the Netherlands. A somber and striking monument demarcates the fire boundary around the city, inside of which everything was destroyed. The Hague is home to the country's government, parliament, and supreme court, even though Amsterdam is constitutionally defined as the capital. Amsterdam, of course, is one of Europe's most cosmopolitan destinations, and for a time, was the world's leading economic power and artistic center.

Rotterdam's Fire Boundary, lit up by searchlights
for an anniversary of the bombing.

One of my favorite science fiction series takes place partly in the gritty streets of future Rotterdam (internet challenge: which series?), and it was really fun to soak in the atmosphere of the streets and shipping canals, and easy to imagine the characters scrapping through their misfortunes in front of my eyes. My visit to Rotterdam happened to coincide with a number of festivals, including the annual Wereldhavendagen, which celebrates the city's port industry and history with a tremendous showing of boats, fireworks, and waterfront activity. By the good graces and social connections of my host, a young man named Daan, I ended up at De Nacht van de Kaap, another annual celebration that fused the Dutch genre of Levenslied music with old-timey sailors, sea shanties, burlesque, and excessive costumery. We stayed until 3:30am, shantying and singing at the top of our lungs with a crowd of people, accompanying a little band on an impromptu stage cranking out an odd mix of sentimental American standards like Queen and the Everly Brothers, and a bunch of European stuff I'd never heard.

I woke up the next morning with a sore and raspy throat and stuffed up sinuses. I crossed my fingers, drank some ginger tea, and hoped that it was simply a consequence of too much singing and too much exposure to cigarette smoke. I set off on my bike for The Hague, and was immediately met with a monstrous rain shower. It passed quickly enough, but by the time I got to The Hague, soaking and sniffly, it was clear that I was just plain sick. I took some refuge indoors by exploring the M.C. Escher museum, one of my favorite artists and childhood heroes. After an inspiring and moving couple of hours in the museum, another cup of tea, and a plate of fresh poffertjes, I was feeling a bit better. I paid a quick visit downtown before continuing on to Amsterdam.

The Hague's scenic downtown.

The countryside between The Hague and Amsterdam was as Dutch as it gets: ancient windmills surrounded by resplendent fields of tulips stretched in every direction. I missed the height of the tulip season, of course, but there were still a surprising number of flowers in bloom.

Holland's tulip fields in full spring splendor.

My excitement for Amsterdam was comprised of many facets: it marked the final destination on my month-long trip; most everybody I'd met over the last month would wax poetic about how much I would love Amsterdam whenever they heard that's where I was headed; and of course, to finally see a city where the bicycle reigns as king.

In the States, however just or unjust this reputation may be, Amsterdam is synonymous with three things first and foremost: legal marijuana, legal prostitution, and bicycles. Regarding the first, I live in Washington, one of the few states in the country where pot is already legal; it's also been more than a decade since I've smoked anything, or had any interest. Regarding the second, well, let's just suffice it to say that some tourist attractions are better left unexplored. But the bicycles! Oh, the bicycles. Amsterdam is consistently recognized as the most bicycle-friendly city in the world. (For some perspective, not a single city in the US even places in the top twenty.) There are more bikes than there are people, and bikes outnumber cars 4 to 1. The network of bicycle lanes through the city are as well-developed as the road network for automobiles. At the central train station downtown, there is a 3-story ferry parked permanently outside whose sole purpose is to provide additional parking space for bikes. What a joy to ride around a city where a cyclist is in the majority for a change.

Bicycle parking outside of Amsterdam's Central train station.

Of course, Amsterdam is famous for many other things as well. The complex network of canals that permeate the city are nothing short of an engineering marvel. There are countless museums, many of which are grouped together in the Museumplein, including the Van Gogh Museum, and the world class Rijksmuseum. I visited the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, which house countless masterpieces from artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, Warhol, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. I also visited the house where Anne Frank and her family hid and were ultimately discovered during WWII, which I had absolutely no idea was located in Amsterdam.

Chagall's celebrated The Fiddler, on display at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum.

There was a lot to explore, and not much time to do it. I arrived in Amsterdam on Sunday evening, and flew out early Tuesday afternoon. Given the time I needed at the airport to take apart and pack up my bicycle, this really left me only one day to take in the city. Add to this a fair amount of rain, and the fact that I was still sick, and I can't help but feel, in retrospect, that I didn't get my fair chance with Amsterdam. I rode my bike around a lot, and spent a good amount of time inside the warm and dry museums, but I think a good solid week is needed to do that city any amount of justice.

And just like that, I'm home again. The trip back was blessedly uneventful, and made easier by Delta offering a direct flight all the way back to Seattle. My house is still intact, my garden is bursting with still-not-quite-ripe tomatoes, blooming cyclamens and love-in-a-mist, and I have a new pair of roommates to get to know. Last night I slept alone in my own bed for perhaps the second time in the last two months. It feels good to be home.

Some happy little Seattle planters!

Looking back on it, I consider my trip successful in pretty much every way: I didn't get my bicycle or anything else stolen, I didn't cause any major international incidents, I learned a lot in my class, I met some wonderful people and saw some beautiful places, and had a great time doing it. If I were to do it again, though, I think I might do it differently. I either wouldn't get a return ticket on a set date, or I would let go of some of the attachment I had about making it the whole way by bicycle. I passed through seven different countries on my bike in the space of three weeks; there was so much to explore that I just didn't get to do, because I didn't have the time. Much of the travel between major cities could've been skipped altogether without missing much, which would've freed up my time to visit cities like Munich, Berlin, and maybe even Paris. The highly-developed, functional, and reliable light rail network  that connects virtually all of Europe makes travel between cities so much easier than I'm used to. Given a limited amount of time, the choice between biking through endless miles of farmland and getting to explore major European cities seems like a no-brainer.

Finally, a quick word of advice, for anybody considering a bike trip through Europe of their own: don't do it on skinny little road tires under any circumstances; you will suffer immensely with cobblestone and rail lines, and probably get a lot of pinch flats, especially if you're carrying a lot of weight. I used tires that were 1.5" wide, which is a good compromise between mountain bike and road bike tires, and I was quite pleased with them. I never got a single flat.

Thanks for taking the time to join me in my travels once again! School starts for me again in just two weeks, and I don't have any more traveling planned any time soon, but don't go away: I've got some big ideas brewing for next summer, and they're pretty different than the usual bike trip...

Love to all,

Scott

A Treatise on Beer

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, even as a passing acquaintance, that I like beer. I really like beer. For me, beer is more of a pastime than it is just a drink: I’ve been brewing it for eight years, and have been enjoying its taste for about half my life now.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest has shaped my tastes enormously. Cascadia has an unbelievably rich beer culture; my home states of Oregon and Washington have almost 300 breweries between them alone. Washington itself grows 25% of the world's supply of hops, and more than 75% of the nation's. As such, distinct styles of ale have evolved from the region, usually typified by large quantities of hops. I have always been a big fan of IPAs, CDAs, barley wines, anything aggressively hopped, and anything with the word Imperial in its name.

A recent hop harvest from Washington's Yakima Valley.

In contrast, I have never liked German beer. That assertion has always come with an important caveat, however. Imagine spending some time in Munich, and while you’re there, you run across some American beer in a market or a biergarten. What do you think it would be? What kind of beer do you think is produced in enough quantity and has enough marketing power to make it across the globe? Coors, maybe? Pabst? I think that, more often than not, you’ll end up with a beverage that reduces beer to a caricature of tacky American culture, rather than what I would consider an accurate representation of American beer. It doesn’t seem far-fetched, then, to believe that most of the German beer I’ve had in the States probably suffers from the same problem. I don’t like the German beer I've had in the US, then, but I have always said I would withhold my judgment until I get to try it the way it’s meant to be enjoyed. 

Welp, guess what? I just spent about three weeks in Germany. I drank a lot of German beer. And yeah, it’s pretty good: crisp, refreshing, even palatable warm. It doesn’t seem to have the distinctiveness that I’m used to in a beer: I could drink fifteen bottles of Hacker-Pschorr Weisse in a row, and then not be able to pick it out in a taste test. But that’s okay. When it really comes down to it, drinking a beer is more about the circumstances, the story, and the surroundings than it is about the taste. Hey! I got to go to Bavaria and have a Gemütlichkeit with a bunch of other Germans over Maßkrüge of Helles from a brewery that's older than my country! That’s going to bias the ol’ taste buds no matter how you cut it.

But last night came the real challenge. You see, I actively dislike Belgian beer. Belgian beer is characterized by a rather sour and yeasty flavor, which is imparted by Brettanomyces bruxellensis, a wild strain of yeast that is usually viewed in the brewing world as a contaminant more than a desirable. Belgian beers are a huuuuuuge trend in the beer scene right now, and there are many bars and even breweries in the Pacific Northwest that specialize in Belgians, and only Belgians. I’ve tried them enough to know that I don’t like them very much, and I've never thought I needed to go to Belgium to be sure.

And yet, there I was in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, the proverbial center of Europe, on a Friday night. And wouldn’t you know it, but that very evening happened to mark the beginning of Belgian Beer Weekend 2013, right in the center of the Grand Place, with over 350 Belgian beers on tap from more than 50 different breweries. Clearly, for better or worse, this was not an opportunity I could let go to waste.

Belgian Beer Weekend in the Grand Place, Brussels.

Belgians (the people) are insane about their beer. Beer festivals of one type or another can usually be found somewhere in town. One of the more prominent buildings in the Grand Place is a brewers' museum. Even the iconic and celebrated Manneken Pis is occasionally hooked up to a keg of beer to dispense libations for passersby. And on this night, people were out in full force for the occasion: thousands of people pressed up shoulder to shoulder, jovial and lighthearted, and thirsty, thirsty, thirsty. I fought my way through the gambrinous crowd for three hours in order to conduct my scientific survey.

The results: I still don't like Belgian beer. Don't get me wrong, I had some good ones. And as in Germany, the atmosphere was as fun and authentic as it gets. But dammit, most of them just taste weird. But hey, now I know for sure. And in the end, in the name of science, a little pickling of my liver for the sake of knowledge was worth it.

No seriously, this really happens.

Strasbourg

Number of kilometers: 970

I would like to begin this post by taking the opportunity to wax ecstatic about the Couchsurfing community. Couchsurfing.org is a website that connects people traveling all across the world with other people who can offer a place to stay. Yes, you are either inviting a perfect stranger into your house or you are staying with one, but there are multiple safeguards in place: but both parties have the chance to vet the other before they agree to anything, and Couchsurfing is a self-policing community, where you can easily see what kind of host or surfer someone has been, based on previous feedback. It is entirely free; no money ever changes hands. Instead, you trade stories, experiences, philosophies, anything you care to offer, or you simply pay hospitality forward to the next person. It is a very simple and straightforward idea, and one that works beautifully.

Soon after arriving in Strasbourg, I found a place to stay in town, hosted by a math teacher Marion and her architect boyfriend Eli. After the awkward introduction where I went in for a hug while she went in for little air kisses on the cheeks they do in France, I was treated like an old friend. We went over to their friends’ house for some drinks and snacks before going out on the town, where I found myself in a circle of eight people all speaking French at one another, most all of it going over my head. After 10pm, we walked downtown, where they were doing an impressive light show on the surface of the aforementioned cathedral, accompanied by a medley of pieces by French composers. The finale was Ravel’s Bolero, in which the cathedral started black as night, and piece by piece was slowly lit in more aggressive colors with the music, until a towering, ominous, 200-foot-tall gothic mass of stone was revealed, only to go pitch black again with the final note. Words cannot begin to describe how awesome the experience was, in the truest sense. Afterward, we headed down to La Petite France, a part of downtown riven and hemmed in with canals, where we enjoyed then nightlife at the Academie de la Biere until 3:30am.

The dizzying view from the top of the Strasbourg Cathedral,
more than 200 feet high.

The next morning. Marion took me for a bike ride around town, showing me a variety of landmarks, such as the headquarters of the European Union. We reconnected with everyone from the night before downtown once more, where we climbed to the top of the cathedral for a panoramic view of the city, and then back down for wine and a lunch of traditional Alsation dishes such as choucroute, flammekueche, and baeckeoffe, which translate as meat, flat meat, and meaty meat, respectively. Strasbourg is in the Alsace region of France, directly on the border of Germany, and is one of two regions that were occupied by Germany during World War II. It is easy to see remnants of German influence in the culture, especially in the food.

Bon appetit!

When I arrived in Strasbourg, I came here not knowing a single person, or even my way around. Because of Couchsurfing, I was plopped right into the middle of a group of wonderful, accepting locals, who showed me around, gave me a shower and a place to stay, fed me well, and even sent me on my way with a pannier full of food. What more could a person want?

It’s been an uneventful few days of riding since Strasbourg. It’s been getting a lot hotter, and that seems to be the climate that’s changing, more than the weather. Further south, every single field, vine, and blade of grass I saw was verdant and happy like it was the beginning of spring; here the fields turn browner, the sun harsher. I can really start feeling the heat by 9:30am.

A lovely waterfall of ruins adjoining one of France's many canals.

I’m now in Luxembourg City, in the tiny little country of Luxembourg. (Ten points if you could find it on a map before you read this.) I haven’t yet figured out why Luxembourg is its own country, and I probably won’t. I do know that the people who live here are true polygots: virtually everyone speaks perfect French and German, and many more speak Luxembourgese, the country’s third official language; most seem to know a fair bit of English as well.

From here I head to Brussels, in Belgium, and I hope to be there by Friday. I’m beginning to worry that I’m not going to make it to Amsterdam in time for my flight home on the 10th, but I suppose I can always just make up some time by jumping on a bus somewhere. Hopefully it won’t come to that. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but I like the idea of completing the trip by bike if I can, even if it is hot as hell.